Askegren got his start in the comics industry with three short stories published in 1979 and 1980 in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazines Creepy and Vampirella, beginning with the eight-page "Hell's Playground", illustrated by Leo Duranona, in Creepy No. 108 (June 1979). His regular employment, however, came as a manager at Crown Book Stores in the Washington, D.C., area, and later as a technical writer first at ACS Corporation and then at C2 Corporation in the Tysons Corner, Virginia, area.